How to choose an advertising agency in Astana: 10 questions to ask
Most people choose an agency by the presentation and by how pleasant the meeting was. Two months later the budget is spent and nobody can answer the question “how much did we earn?”
The good news: you do not need to understand advertising to filter out the weak ones. Ask ten questions and listen to how they are answered.
About results
- What do you count as a result? The right answer: leads and sales. The wrong one: reach, clicks, “awareness”. A brand with a budget in the millions may need those. For a small or medium business, they are a way of not answering for the money.
- How will I see that advertising brought a sale, not just a lead? If the answer has no mention of a CRM or analytics, you can stop listening.
- What happens if there is no result after a month? A good agency will explain what gets checked and when a decision is made. A bad one will say “it takes time” and send an invoice.
About access and money
- Whose name will the ad account be in? Yours. An account with its history and audiences is your asset, and you should be able to take it with you if you leave.
- Does the ad budget go straight to Google and Meta, or through you? Both happen, but you should know exactly where your money sits and what commission the agency takes.
- What makes up your price? A fixed fee for management plus budget, a percentage of budget, payment for results. There is no single right answer, but “we will work it out later” will not do.
About the work
- Who will run my account, and how many clients do they have? Seniors do the selling and juniors do the work: it is a classic. Ask directly.
- How often and in what form do I get a report? Say up front what you need: how much was spent, how many leads, how many sales. Everything else is an appendix to that.
- Can you show a similar case with numbers? Not a client logo but numbers: what it was and what it became. If there are no cases, that is an answer too.
- What will you not do? A good contractor knows how to say no. If an agency takes any niche and promises “everything at once”, it most likely cannot tell good projects from bad ones.
Our take
The most honest filter is the question about a free audit. If an agency is ready to show what exactly is broken in your advertising before you pay, it is confident in its expertise. If it sends a “commercial proposal” full of general words, it has nothing to look at yet.
We will go through your advertising and show where money is being lost. Free, no contract.
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